Machines That Won't Shut Up

By

Christine Rosen

Updated April 10, 2009 12:01 a.m. ET

When the Canadian technology company IMS recently began selling iLane -- a hands-free device that links to your BlackBerry and allows you to use voice commands to open, listen to and respond to your email while driving -- it likely fulfilled the wishes of many a time-stressed commuter. According to Discover magazine, the average U.S. city commuter now loses 38 hours every year to delays caused by traffic. ILane offers its users the alluring promise of making safe and efficient use of that time, with the bonus of feeling like Captain Kirk issuing orders from his command chair.

The demonstration video featured on IMS's Web site shows a stylishly dressed businessman responding to iLane's overtures about a new email as he cruises along a tree-lined boulevard. "What would you like to do?" murmurs iLane, in its uxorious synthetic female voice. "Check messages," says our hero, briskly. And he does, with abandon, scheduling appointments, confirming travel arrangements and returning phone calls, his hands never straying from the steering wheel. The company's marketing materials tout the device as "a true technology breakthrough in personal productivity."

ENLARGE

Grant Robertson

ILane is one of a new crop of text-to-speech technologies, or technologies that talk to you. The chilling voice of HAL the malevolent computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey" has given way to the mundane guidance of car GPS devices and the frustrating hell of automated customer-service lines. The latest version of Amazon's Kindle electronic reader now offers a text-to-speech feature that reads books aloud to you. And numerous applications allow you to turn your iPhone into a yammering personal assistant.

A synthetic voice doggedly reciting our emails was hardly the future imagined by pioneers of early audio books. In 1952, recent college graduates Barbara Holdridge and Marianne Roney cornered Dylan Thomas at the bar of the Chelsea Hotel and promised him $500 if he would allow them to record him reading his own poetry. He eventually agreed, and Ms. Holdridge and Ms. Roney went on to found Caedmon Records, which recorded the spoken words of Eudora Welty, T.S. Eliot and William Faulkner, among others. Thanks to our remarkable new text-to-speech technologies, reading aloud, once a skilled art and traditional pleasure, has been rendered technologically efficient but remarkably mundane.

Although text-to-speech technologies have been around for some time, their sophistication and ability to mimic the human voice have improved recently. Software programs such as Natural Reader offer a range of "natural voices" in several languages that translate screen text into a spoken voice, each with its own quasi- human quirks. Among the Natural Reader voices I sampled recently were no-nonsense Mike, obsequious Julia, warbly Claire and, for German speakers, unrelenting Klara.

These software programs and technologies, originally developed for the sight-impaired, are gaining adherents among the rest of the population. As a recent study by the Council for Research Excellence found, the average American adult spends 8.5 hours every day staring at some type of screen. And this is exacting a cost in eyestrain, among other things. Increasingly, people are seeking ways to listen to, rather than read, their steady diet of information.

Is listening more effective than reading? A recent study conducted by a psychologist at the State University of New York, Fredonia, compared the test scores of students who listened to a traditional lecture (which included PowerPoint slides) and students who were given access to the lecture in podcast form (as well as copies of the PowerPoint slides). The results, published in the journal Computers & Education, found that students who listened to the podcast scored "significantly higher" on an exam taken one week later than did those who attended the lecture. The reasons for the difference are not clear: It is possible that aural memory is more vivid than the visual kind. Like students in the traditional lecture, those who used the podcast could take notes. But they could also replay the podcast lecture as many times as they needed to, perhaps contributing to their ability to retain information.

It would be wonderful if the text-to-speech revolution enhanced our brain's functioning, causing us to learn faster and remember more. But somehow a major cognitive transformation seems doubtful. And there are reasons for concern, too -- not least the effect on other aspects of life as those strange artificial voices compete for our attention and require us to enter feedback loops normally reserved for, well, actual human beings.

Their claims to safety notwithstanding, for instance, technologies such as iLane are potentially dangerous distractions for drivers. The research on multitasking is clear: Even when we use hands-free devices for our cellphones, there is something so deeply distracting about carrying on disembodied conversations while driving a car that the National Safety Council has recommended a ban on all talking and texting activities behind the wheel.

It is also worth examining the message of hyper-efficiency and constant communication promoted by devices such as iLane. Unlike audio books, for example, which at least offer the possibility of entertainment, these new voice technologies are keen on persuading us to think about work as often as possible. "Personal productivity" sounds perfectly anodyne -- or even desirable -- in small doses, but in a culture where it is already rare to remain unplugged for even short spans of time, perhaps a little inefficiency might do us some good.

Worryingly, the increasing popularity of text-to-speech technologies comes when Americans are reporting high rates of loneliness and isolation. A recent study by sociologists at Duke University and the University of Arizona found that Americans now have far fewer close confidants than they did 20 years ago. Nearly a quarter of those surveyed reported having no one with whom they could discuss important problems. We have created more technologies to talk at us when we have fewer people to talk to.

Perhaps this is why iLane actively anthropomorphizes its product, calling it "an intelligent, portable device that rides with you inside your vehicle." It's not some sterile machine that you install on your dashboard; it's a well-informed carpool friend that has the added advantage of shutting up when you say, "Quiet!" In fact, the iLane has a significant glitch: Even the most quotidian noises -- a stray cough, a muttered curse -- can trip the system, prompting iLane to shriek, "Do you want to reply?" In this sense it's less like a complacent commuter companion than a high-strung, high-tech hitchhiker.

Among the "76 Reasonable Questions to Ask About Any Technology" devised by philosopher Jacques Ellul many years ago is the following: "What does it allow us to ignore?" By filling our hours and our ears with the effluvia of our modern communications infrastructure, the new text-to-speech technologies allow us to ignore many things: a tedious daily commute, a rude driver, distressing news on the radio. But they also allow us to ignore something else, something potentially more valuable than the supposed efficiency we gain by using them: the opportunity to think, to let our minds wander away from work and mundane concerns. They let us ignore the possibility of silence.

Ms. Rosen, a fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, is a senior editor of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society.

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